Authentic Foods Bette’s Gourmet Four Flour Blend

I must say, when I saw this flour blend in the store it intrigued me. I’m always interested in trying multi-blend flours that state they are a good all-purpose product. Made from corn starch, tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, fava flour, and sorghum flour, Bette’s Gourmet Blend brings some flours into play that are not often part of a gluten-free all-purpose flour mixture. Typically, you find some form of rice flour, and often potato flour or starch (these two are not the same thing) in the ingredients list. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with using brown rice, sweet rice, or potato flour/starch in your gluten-free baking endeavors … I include them in my baking and cooking regularly. It is just nice to see some variety sometimes. So I purchased a bag and set off to work to see how Bette’s performed.

First I tried incorporating Bette’s into my chocolate chip cookie recipe. With this flour blend, since it contains no Xanthan gum, I was sure to include it among the recipe ingredients. My initial impression of the flour when I opened the package was that it had the texture of gluten-containing all-purpose flour. Some gluten-free flours have a bit of a slick feel to them, but Bette’s didn’t. It had a more substantial feel to it, powdery – in an appropriate way. While measuring, the flour didn’t become a fine, slippery dust that wanted to “poof” into the air (and land on everything near by.) This flour was “feeling” right so far.

When it was time to stir the flour and all other dry ingredients into my wet ingredients, the flour blended in easily and completely. The cookie dough had the perfect consistency, not too thin and not too thick and tough. When scooping the dough onto the baking sheet, the dough again stayed formed into nice balls ready for baking. When the baking was complete, the cookies were the flatter variety, not the puffy style. This was perfectly fine with me. I like both types of cookies actually. The warm cookies had a wonderful slight crispness to the outside, with a slightly chewy, melt-in-your mouth texture on the inside. There was no graininess that can sometimes result with some rice-based flour blends. Once cooled completely, the cookies retained that wonderful, slightly chewy texture, not often found in homemade cookies, but the crunchiness seemed to lessen over time. This was not a negative characteristic, just a change of one. The cookies were received well by all my taste-tester, gluten-free and not, and were being consumed at a rate at which I’d have none left for the next day, to see how they hold up with time. So, I hid some. And when I brought them out again on day two, they received rave reviews, and consumption almost equal to evaporation. Obviously, the cookies held up just fine. Test #1 complete and successful.

My second test involved using Bette’s in my Gluten Free, Dairy Free Pumpkin Banana Bread. Without going into a great deal of detail, let’s just say, I was so pleased with how the recipe turned out, that I made it one of my feature recipes. Delicious!